Denis Villeneuve calls it a “big, big joy” to have his new film, Sicario, chosen to premiere at the Cannes film festival in May. “It was an old dream. I say ‘it was’ because it was a dream that was so old that I was not dreaming about it a lot any more.”

The 47-year-old Quebec director has been to Cannes several times, most recently in 2009 with Polytechnique, but never in competition for the Palme d’Or. His features since then – Incendies, Prisoners and Enemy – have screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and elsewhere before opening in wide release.

A question about being the lone Canadian this year – last year saw films by Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Xavier Dolan in competition – seems to take the filmmaker off guard. “I don’t feel that I’m going against Italians, French, American or Japanese,” he says. “I feel that I’m going into competition with other filmmakers. Cinema is my country.”

Besides, he points out, Sicario (the Spanish title means hitman) is a U.S. production about a CIA war against a drug cartel, set partially in Mexico. “I feel I will represent North America.”

Villeneuve worked with many of the same people as on Prisoners, including costume and production designers, visual effects and makeup, composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and cinematographer Roger Deakins, a 12-time Oscar nominee, including for Prisoners.

Blade Runner is almost a religion for me

“I had the best crew ever and I tried to keep the same people,” he says. “I don’t need to explain things anymore. They know exactly my sensibility. We can just push boundaries.”

Villeneuve says he was struck by the film noir quality of the script for Sicario, written by actor and first-time screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. “I thought it was very accurate, almost like an anticipation movie, a dark tale about our near-future.”

He knows a thing or two about the future. Villeneuve is working on Story of Your Life, about a linguist who must figure out whether alien craft come in peace or as invaders. And next year he hopes to begin shooting a still untitled sequel to Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction epic. Harrison Ford is attached to reprise his role.

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“I’m ready to do it because the original Blade Runner is by far one of my favourite movies of all time,” Villeneuve says. “Blade Runner is almost a religion for me.”

He says it all began when Hollywood first started to take notice of him after his Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film with 2010’s Incendies. “People were asking me, what do you want to do? I said science fiction, always science fiction. I’m dreaming to do science fiction since a very long time. So now that the door is open, I’m just jumping into it. My soul will be filled if I do that.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/denis-villeneuve-on-the-big-joy-of-sicarios-cannes-premiere-and-his-upcoming-blade-runner-sequel/feed2stdActor Tatiana Maslany with her award for best performance in a continuing dramatic role at the Canadian Screen Awards in TorontDenis Villeneuve lone Canadian in competition at Cannes 2015http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/denis-villeneuve-lone-canadian-in-competition-at-cannes-2015
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/denis-villeneuve-lone-canadian-in-competition-at-cannes-2015#respondThu, 16 Apr 2015 17:29:53 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=742857

Quebec director Denis Villeneuve will carry the flag for Canada at the Cannes film festival this year, when his new film Sicario plays in competition. The crime drama – the Spanish title means hitman – stars Emily Blunt as an FBI agent fighting a Mexican drug cartel. The film also stars Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro and Jon Bernthal. The film is a U.S. production.

Last year, three Canadians films were in competition for the Palme d’Or and other festival prizes: David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars; Atom Egoyan’s The Captive; and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, which took home the Jury Prize, tied with Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language. The 2014 festival also featured Lost River, the directing debut of London, Ont., native Ryan Gosling, and a new film from Quebec’s Stéphane Lafleur, Tu Dors Nicole.

But when the announcement was made on April 16 for the 2015 lineup, Villeneuve was the only Canadian in a list of 17 films that was heavy on European productions and also included three Asian directors. The competition list usually includes 20 films, so there will probably be some late additions before the festival, which runs from May 13 to May 24 this year.

For North American audiences, many of the biggest names will be screening their films out of competition, which means no possibility of prizes, but all the glitz of the festival’s red-carpet galas. They include Woody Allen’s newest, Irrational Man, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone; Pixar’s Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carman; Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Tom Hardy and directed by George Miller; and The Little Prince, directed by Mark Osborne and based on the beloved book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Much of the animation for The Little Prince was done in Montreal.

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Carol, from U.S. director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven), based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and starring Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in the story of department store clerk in 1950s New York who falls for a married woman.

Macbeth, directed by Australia’s Justin Kurzel, stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s 1606 play; this one was filmed on location, as it were, in Scotland.

The Sea of Trees, by American Gus Van Sant, stars Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe in the story of two men who meet in a forest near Mount Fuji that is famous for its suicides. Naomi Watts also stars as McConaughey’s wife.

Youth, from Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, stars Michael Caine as an orchestra conductor who is asked to come out of retirement. The film also features Paul Dano, Rachel Weisz, Jane Fonda and Harvey Keitel.

Louder than Bombs, an English-language debut from Danish director Joachim Trier, stars Gabriel Byrne, Jesse Eisenberg, Amy Ryan and David Strathairn. It tells the story of a war photographer (Isabelle Huppert) who is killed in a car crash, and of what her family discovers about her afterwards.

The Lobster, from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps), stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw, Olivia Colman and John C. Reilly and tells a bizarre story about a future society where people must find a mate in 45 minutes or be transformed into animals.

Also in competition: Dheepan, by French director Jacques Audiard; La Loi du marché (A Simple Man), by French director Stéphane Brizé; Marguerite and Julien, by French director Valerie Donzelli; Il Racconto dei Racconti (The Tale of Tales), by Italy’s Matteo Garrone; The Assassin, by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien; Mountains May Depart, by China’s Jia Zhangke; Our Little Sister, by Hirokazu Kore-eda of Japan; Mon Roi (My King) by the French director who goes by Maïwenn; and Son of Saul, the only debut feature in competition, from Laszlo Nemes of Hungary.

An Italian card sharp who used infra-red contact lenses to count cards marked with invisible ink has been jailed for two years.

The self-styled “player and cheat of international renown” impressed even the presiding judge for his sophisticated use of “old techniques and high-end technology” to win thousands of dollars at a casino in Cannes on the Cote d’Azur. The court in Grasse heard how Stefano Ampollini, 56 – code-named Parmesan – turned up at Les Princes casino in August 2011, wearing a set of infra-red contact lenses bought online from China for euros 2,000 ($2,800).

Opposite him on the stud poker table was a discreet accomplice – another Italian code-named The Israeli – who sniffed or snorted to help Ampollini choose the right cards. Two corrupt casino staff members had already marked the cards with invisible ink. Thanks to his special contact lenses, Ampollini was able to keep track of the game, winning euros 70,000 ($98,000) without being caught.

“Casino security found his behaviour rather strange as he won very easily and, above all, because he folded twice when he had an excellent hand, suggesting he knew the croupier’s cards,” said Marc Concas, the lawyer for the Groupe Lucien Barriere, which owns the casino. They called the betting police, who began an investigation.

After tapping telephones, the police worked out that staff members had handed cards to the Italians who had marked them with invisible ink.

They were then placed under cellophane and returned to the casino cupboard, ready for use. When the Italian returned alone two months later, he won euros 21,000 ($30,000), but was arrested as he left the casino.

Ampollini, who confirmed that he had given other pairs of infra-red contact lenses to unnamed “friends”, reportedly smiled as Marc Joando, the presiding judge, marvelled at his exploits. That did no stop the court on Wednesday jailing him and fining him euros 100,000 ($140,000).

Two other Italians were also convicted. Gianfranco Tirrito, 55, described as an elegant “professional cheat” and “probably the mastermind”, was jailed for three years and fined euros 100,000 ($140,000). Rocco Grassanno, 57, who claimed to have come to the Cote d’Azur “for tourism and to meet beautiful women”, was jailed for 30 months and fined euros 50,000 ($70,000).

“This is the first time this sort of technique has been seen in Europe,” Mr Concas said.

PARIS — A staggering 40 million euro ($53 million) worth of diamonds and other jewels were stolen Sunday from the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes, in one of Europe’s biggest jewelry heists recent years, police said.

The hotel in the sweltering French Riviera was hosting a temporary jewelry exhibit over the summer from the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.

A police spokesman said the theft took place around noon, but he could not confirm local media reports that the robber was a single gunman who stuffed a suitcase with the gems before making a swift exit. The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.

Several police officers were placed in front of the Carlton exhibition room to prevent journalists and photographers gathered at the scene from entering.

The luxury Carlton hotel is situated on the exclusive Promenade de la Croisette that stretches a mile and a half along the French Riviera, and is thronged by the rich and famous throughout the year. The hotel’s position provides not only a beautiful view of the sea, but an easy get away for potential jewel thieves along the long stretch of road.

The valuable gems were supposed to be on public display until the end of August. It was not immediately clear how many pieces were stolen.

Hotel officials would not comment, and attempts to reach Leviev or his company were not immediately successful.

AFP PHOTO / VALERY HACHEVALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty ImagesFrench policemen investigate outside the Carlton Hotel on July 28, 2013 in the French Riviera resort of Cannes, after an armed man held up the jewellery exhibition "Extraordinary diamonds" of the Leviev diamond house, making away with jewels estimated to be worth about 40 million euros ($53 million), according to investigators. The lone gunman managed to evade security and escape with a briefcase containing the valuable jewellery.

Several brazen jewelry thefts have taken place this year, including one in Belgium on Feb. 18 that involved some $50 million worth of diamonds.

In that heist, the stones from the global diamond center of Antwerp had been loaded on a plane headed to Zurich when robbers dressed in dark police clothing and hoods drove through a hole they’d cut in the Brussels Airport fence in two black cars with blue police lights flashing. They drove onto the tarmac, approached the plane, brandished machine guns, offloaded the diamonds, then left in an operation that took barely five minutes.

Authorities have since detained dozens of people and recovered much of the stolen treasure in that operation.

In May, Cannes was struck by two highly publicized jewelry heists during the Cannes Film Festival.

In the first theft, robbers stole about $1 million worth of jewels after ripping a safe from the wall of a hotel room. The jewelry was taken from the Novotel room of an employee of Chopard, the Swiss-based watch and jewelry maker that has loaned bling to A-list stars walking the red carpet at the film festival.

And in the second, thieves outsmarted 80 security guards in an exclusive hotel and made off with a De Grisogono necklace that creators say is worth 2 million euros ($2.6 million.)

Jewel thieves have been getting attention in Europe in more ways than one.

On Thursday, a member of the notorious “Pink Panther” jewel thief gang escaped from a Swiss prison after accomplices rammed a gate and overpowered guards with bursts from their AK-47s, police said.

Milan Poparic fled with fellow inmate Adrian Albrecht from the Orbe prison in the western state of Vaud.

Police say the Pink Panthers network’s members are prime suspects in a series of daring thefts. According to Interpol, the group has targeted luxury watch and jewelry stores in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the United States, netting more than (EURO)330 million (>285m) since 1999.

Poparic is the third member of the Pink Panthers to escape from a Swiss prison in as many months, according to Vaud police.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/53-million-in-jewels-stolen-by-armed-thief-at-luxury-hotel-in-cannes/feed7stdA view of the Carlton hotel, in Cannes, southern France, the scene of a daylight raid, Sunday, July 28, 2013. A staggering 40 million euro ($53 million) worth of jewels and diamonds were stolen Sunday from the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel in Cannes, in one of Europe's biggest jewelry heists recent years, police said. French Riviera hotel was hosting a temporary jewelry exhibit over the summer of the prestigious Leviev diamond house, which is owned by Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev.AFP PHOTO / VALERY HACHEVALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty ImagesShinan: Reliving Tender is the Nighthttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/shinan-reliving-tender-is-the-night
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/shinan-reliving-tender-is-the-night#respondTue, 29 May 2012 23:00:13 +0000http://arts.nationalpost.com/?p=74559

Tender is the night. As is the 24-hour room service.

Could either F. Scott or Zelda Fitzgerald have known that their visages would one day be plastered on an in-suite menu taunting “club sandwich poulet” — this, moreover, in the very villa where one saga of their large-living lives played out? On the exterior of the menu — which I fondled after a night of Côte d’Azur carousing — is a collage of photos of the Jazz-age Fitzgeralds, in saturated Warhol colours. (Also inside? The option of a democratically minded, pick-your-own-adventure, “pizza au choix.”)

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Giving in to my late-night urges, I called in something, then took my moonlit place in a tiny balcony that offers, as the price of admission, a view of Cap d’Antibes, Cannes taunting in the sea distance. In 1926, when F. Scott and his bride were situated here in Juan Les Pin, in what’s now called the Hotel Belles Rives, this was roughly the same vantage.

During this juncture — when F. Scott was here to work on his test-of-time-standing masterpiece (and follow-up to The Great Gatsby), Tender is the Night — he saw it this way, at least according to the book’s opening chapter: “On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about halfway between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel…. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people.”

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Today, it’s a compact hotel of 43 rooms. Authentic deco furniture is pooled from the period, giving it a look of maritime-meets-Schiaparelli. A cliff-side terrace delights. A bar inside is known, inevitably, as “The Fitzgerald.” It’s a place, in short, where time, if it doesn’t stand still, most certainly slouches. And whatever violations Belles Rives may be guilty of in terms of the the occasional lapse into lit-crowd kitsch — I’m looking at you, in-room dining — it makes up for it with its ghosts, and its perfectly scaled glamour.

Plus — oh, plus — with Tender is the Night having longed been thought of as a portal into the Fitzgeralds’ complicated marriage and one of the lingering testaments of haute expat life, the Belles Rives is at least one clue into the truth-fiction entanglement.

What struck me is how completely modern Tender is the Night felt. Minus an iPhone or an Obama, it could have been written in 2012

Being that guy, I’d brought out a copy of Tender is the Night to re-read for the first time since my twenties, which, once I got going, proved less of a chore than I’d initially feared. In fact, what struck me is how completely modern it felt — not only its general themes of surfaces and money and cheap pleasures and people who you love and hold you back, but also just in its general ambiance. Minus an iPhone or an Obama, it could have been written in 2012.

Taking in the early-on dinner party scene — a classic in the parties-in-literature genre — I almost expected Zelda and her guy to pull up a chair right there with me. Describing the early-on soiree given by his all-too-doomed protagonists Dick and Nicole Diver, Fitzgerald wrote: “The table seemed to have risen a little toward the sky like a mechanical dancing platform, giving the people around it a sense of being alone with each other in the dark universe, nourished by its only food, warmed by its only lights.”

The model for Dick and Nicole Diver, as any lay English major knows, were partly the Fitzgeralds themselves, but also Sara and Gerald Murphy, who were with them in France, and rank among some of the great zeligs of the era (being everywhere, and befriending everyone, from the Picassos to the Cole Porters). Talking to The New Yorker years later about the accelerating self-destruction he witnessed in the two co-dependents during that time, Gerald said that F. Scott talked a hell of a lot about his book, but was too busy drinking or submerged in hijinks to have been doing a lot of actual writing. (Indeed, the book, which had many false starts, would only out come after eight years, and countless revisions.)

“I’m happier than I’ve been for years. It’s one of those strange, precious, all-too-transitory moments when everything in our life seems to be going well.” Those are the tracks-stopping words imprinted on a plaque in the lobby of the hotel now. F. Scott’s, in fact! A moment in time — even during a period there was enough melancholia to go around in his world, according to most of his biographers.

I stopped in front of the plaque several times during my stay, full with the knowledge that Zelda would be in and out of sanitariums soon enough, and F. Scott himself would be dead by 44. Tender Is the Night, which was not well-received when it came out, but has wormed its way into classic status over the decades, was out of print when he did.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/shinan-reliving-tender-is-the-night/feed0stdWith Tender is the Night having long been thought of as a portal into the Fitzgeralds’ complicated marriage, the Belles Rives hotel is at least one clue into the truth-fiction entanglement.Shinan: The good & the glamorous at Canneshttp://news.nationalpost.com/scene/shinan-the-good-the-glamorous-at-cannes
http://news.nationalpost.com/scene/shinan-the-good-the-glamorous-at-cannes#respondMon, 28 May 2012 22:00:49 +0000http://arts.nationalpost.com/?p=74516

A thumb rule: When there’s this much glorious Moët aflow, people will go when they have to go. Which is why, presumably, I ran into Marie Antoinette herself in the men’s room deep, the other night, in the beautiful burrows of the Hotel Du Cap, in the south of France.

“You didn’t see me,” muttered a minty Louis Vuitton-gowned Kirsten Dunst as she emerged from a stall, and a reasonable man-caravan of tuxedo’ed rascals stared on, licking lips. One look, in the hallway, and one might see why Dunst began this reverse-revolution at all: the line for the women’s washroom, as always (and no matter what or where the gala in the universe) was as long as the entré to Heaven (and at this particular moment was starring — in the ensemble of the year — not just Bérénice Bejo of The Artist, but Good WifeJulianna Margulies, and also Marchesa designer/Weinstein wife-of, Georgina Chapman).

And if the lineup to the loo was this good, can you just imagine the party itself? Allow me.

Fugitives to glamour, and corroborators of mischief, they’d come here for the annual Cannes doing that is the Cinema Against AIDS funder for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Picking up where the MET gala earlier this month left off — many of the same circuit suspects looking like either Onxy panthers or Ladurée macaroons come to life — it was the fashion and film worlds combining. Here, on the grounds of a grande dame immortalized forever, perhaps, by café society voyeur Slim Aarons.

“It’s a dress I can sit down in,” is what Milla Jovovich was saying about her spacey, Courvoisier-like Versace dress when I zipped through the Fellini carpet act in front, and through the hotel, and then standing on the back steps, sighing, taking in the cat’s paw Med breeze. But before I could fully grasp the weight of Jovovich’s frock dissertation, my sight was distracted by more models than even Leo DiCaprio has in his little black book. A coquettish Doutzen Kroes. A nothing-to-it Lily Donaldson. A sincerely sheer Heidi Klum. (There was a reason for the particularly large model contingent this year: Many of them were to walk here in a fashion show, curated by former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. Themed as the “Perfect Black Wardrobe,” and spanning sexy dark looks from everyone from Chanel to Dior to Lanvin to Tom Ford, the whole wardrobe was auctioned off eventually to the winning bidder — US$377,000, merci beaucoup.)

The gala, once it got properly going, was, I must say, intriguing for its inter-table machinations (Karl Lagerfeld plotting like a school girl with Roitfeld at one; Kylie Minogue passing by me looking like a version of Kylie Minogue we used to know) but doubly so for the onstage auction rigmarole. This latter observation is certainly not a given from the purview of this seasoned gala-goer. The begging by celebs, this night, hit notes I’d not witnessed before, and with each one trying to outdo the other, it worked — the event totaling almost US$11-million, a said-to-be record for the AIDS organization.

Klum, for instance, offered to throw in a massage for anyone bidding on a private session with tennis star Novak Djokovic. (She said she was “really good.”) Canada’s own Nina Dobrev — star of The Vampire Dairies — upped the ante by promising to bite another successful bidder.

There was a Hirst and a Warhol up for grabs and, even, it turns out, a chance to star in a movie produced by Harvey (you know the one) and Lagerfeld. (Taking the stage in his signature black-as-ice specs, Lagerfeld said he is quite “friendly,” sending a message that he, for one, doesn’t bite.)

Chris Tucker, meanwhile — working on all cylinders — promised to do the moonwalk and a wee Michael Jackson dance to help boost the moola for his prize. Not sure how Janet Jackson, who was also in the room, lithe and darling in white, made of the whole thing, but it certainly paid off! Buoyed by Moët & Chandon, no doubt — it certainly doesn’t hurt to take away one’s auction inhibitions — Tucker was pumping up merch that constituted the final coffret of the bubbly brand’s Grand Vintage 1911. The hundred-year-plus-one treasure went for about US$188,000. (Surely, they’ll bring out the nice glasses for this one.)

Sometime after the dinner but before the after-party — which was held in another part of the hotel — the crowd, broke up into a million little pieces of Adrien Brody, Kim Kardashian, Diane Kruger, Gerald Butler and Aishwarya Rai. Then an item was proffered that really did turn my head. It was the complete collection of photos literally on the walls here — 18 prints of stars by legendary shooter Terry O’Neill.

Actress Michelle Rodriguez, who was bustin’ hard for this one, told the room that the photos together were a sure bet. “You will get laid,” she said.

CANNES, France — Amour, a wrenching tale of a devoted Parisian husband caring for his dying wife, took the top prize at Cannes on Sunday, bringing a second Palme d’Or to Austrian director Michael Haneke.

Starring French acting legend Jean-Louis Trintignant, the French-language film beat 21 other movies to claim Cannes gold for Haneke three years after he won with The White Ribbon set on the eve of World War I.

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Danish heart-throb Mads Mikkelsen took the best actor prize for his role in the taut psychological thriller The Hunt.

Italian jury head Nanni Moretti and his eight-strong panel handed the prestigious award to Mikkelsen for his turn as a man who watches his life unravel after he is falsely accused of molesting a child.

CannesMichael Haneke's Cannes Film Festival entry Amour (Love).

Two Romanian actresses shared the best actress prize for their roles as best friends, a nun and the victim of a deadly “exorcism,” in Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills.

Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur appear in the harrowing picture by the director who captured the Palme d’Or in 2007 for the Communist-era abortion drama 4 Years, 3 Months and 2 Days.

He also won the screenplay prize this year.

An Italian tragicomedy starring a jailed former mafia hitman as a man driven mad by a quest to become a reality TV star, directed by Matteo Garrone, won the runner-up prize.

In Reality, the director, who captured the festival’s same Grand Prix runner-up award in 2008 for Gomorrah about the mafia’s grip on southern Italy, tells the story of a fishmonger who dreams of joining the Big Brother franchise.

Mexican Carlos Reygadas took best director award for his baffling family drama Post Tenebras Lux.

The movie, whose Latin title means “after darkness, light” and derives from the biblical Book of Job, is the fourth of the director’s works to get an outing at Cannes.

Cannes veteran Ken Loach took the third place Jury Prize award for his kilts-and-whiskey comedy The Angel’s Share, six years after the Briton won the Palme d’Or top prize.

The 75-year-old, who was awarded the Palme in 2006 for The Wind That Shakes the Barley about Ireland’s independence struggle, was back in Cannes this year with a film in competition for a record 11th time.

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Giamatti hadn’t worked with Cronenberg before, but he was excited to hear that someone was adapting one of Don DeLillo’s novels. The script, with its single very long scene for his character, won him over completely.

“I thought the script was just bonkers,” he says. “And then the part was really interesting. And then it’s also 20 minutes long. That doesn’t come along very often.”

Giamatti plays Benno Levin, a deranged man whose encounter with the Wall Street financier played by Robert Pattinson constitutes the final act of Cronenberg’s new movie. It was Giamatti’s first encounter with the vampire heartthrob.

“I’ve never seen the Twilight movies,” he admits. “I knew who he was but only vaguely. I didn’t even know he was English. When I walked in he was just a guy who was really good and knew what he was doing. He was so ready and in command of it he helped me. It calmed me down and pulled me in.”

He shot the pivotal scene while making another movie, flying from Miami to Toronto and back again. “I was thinking about it a lot on my own while I was doing that other movie,” he says, “and fortunately that other movie was not that demanding on me so I had time. I felt prepared.”

Nothing against that other movie, mind you, which is Rock of Ages, starring Tom Cruise and opening June 15. “Rock of Ages is just so weird,” says Giamatti. “This is just crazy, completely crazy. I like movie musicals; I just think they’re crazy.”

The actor is looking trim these days. “I’m getting older,” he says. “I was getting too heavy, so I decided to lose some weight.” But the 44-year-old worries the new look may backfire. “Probably it’ll be harder for me now to get work,” he laughs. “I think people hire me because I look like crap.”

He’s having a great time at Cannes (for all its nuttiness), but recounts a weird brush-off from Alexander Payne, who directed him in 2004’s Sideways but is now forbidden from talking to the cast and crew of the films in competition. “I saw him but he said, ‘You can’t talk to me.’ I’d forgotten that he was on the jury here.”

After doing the press rounds for Cosmopolis and Rock of Ages, Giamatti says he “may just take it easy for a while. I don’t know if I’ve had an actual vacation for a long time.”

He says Australia would be a nice place to visit, but only if he could spend a bit of time there. “Sometimes with movies they’ve asked me to go down there but it’s for two days,” he says. “I’m not going to do that; it’s crazy. They go there for two days and then they go to Japan or something like that. It’s” — wait for it — “crazy.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-paul-giamatti-keeps-it-interesting-in-cosmopolis/feed0stdPaul Giamatti at the press conference of Cosmopolis at Cannes.Chris Knight at Cannes: Playing in the Mudhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/chris-knight-at-cannes-playing-in-the-mud
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/movies/chris-knight-at-cannes-playing-in-the-mud#respondSat, 26 May 2012 17:04:28 +0000http://arts.nationalpost.com/?p=74435

The slate of competition films at the Cannes film festival ended the way it began, with an American director’s very particular look at a specific part of his country.

The festival kicked on May 16 with the premiere of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, set in 1965 New England. For the final red carpet gala on Saturday, it was the South’s turn.

“The South is fleeting,” director Jeff Nichols said of his new film, Mud, which is set on the Mississippi River in Arkansas. “It’s a dying way of life. I wanted to capture a snapshot of a place that … won’t be there forever.”

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The film stars Matthew McConaughey (also in Cannes with Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy) as Mud, a wanted man hiding out on an island in the middle of the river. He’s discovered by two 14-year-old boys who decide to help him after he tells them the story of the love of his life, played by Reese Witherspoon.

The boys are Ellis and Neckbone, played by young actors Tye Sheridan and Jacobo Lofland. Ellis is particularly struck by Mud’s story, since his parents are splitting up and he’s fallen for an older girl at school.

“He’s everywhere, he’s observant and he is in desperate need of understanding of his feelings,” Nichols said of the character. “This boy is desperately searching for a version of love that works, and the adults around him in some particular instances are just really bad examples.”

McConaughey waxed rhapsodic on the theme. “The first time you’re in love it’s roofless,” he said. “There’s nothing grounding about it; there’s nothing reasonable about it – thank God!”

With the river setting, the young boys and an escaped convict, comparisons to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were inevitable, and freely admitted by Nichols. He even has a character (played by Sam Shepard) named Tom Blankenship, after the real-life inspiration for Huck Finn.

“If you’re going to steal stuff from somebody you should steal from somebody really intelligent,” he said, adding he has been a fan of the book since he read it as a child. “It imprints on your mind and it finds its way into what you do.”

If he hadn’t admitted to as much, one of his young stars would doubtless have done so for him. They were given The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to read as preparation for their parts. “We found a lot of stuff that happened to wander onto the script,” said Lofland. “We did question Jeff on that.”

Nichols’ previous film, Take Shelter, won the Critics Week Grand Prize in Cannes last year. He praised his young actors, pointing out that they were from the South (rather than Hollywood) and that they arrived knowing how to ride motorbikes and drive motorboats as they do in the movie.

“Whatever I needed them to do,” he said. “ ‘Hey jump down that hole and I’ll throw snakes on you.’ ‘All right.’ ”

Sheridan also appeared in last year’s Palme d’Or winner, The Tree of Life. He does a stellar job of quietly portraying a young man on the cusp of adulthood, trying to define the feelings in his heart.

The annual film festival in the south of France ends on Sunday with the awarding of the Palme d’Or and the other, lesser prizes. Usually by 10 or 11 days into the festival, attendance is starting to wane and critics have more or less decided which films they think will win.

But on Thursday night all anyone seemed able to talk about was the debut of Cosmopolis, a new film by David Cronenberg. The 69-year-old Canadian is something of a fixture at Cannes, having presided over the jury in 1999 and shown his films Crash (1996), Spider (2002) and a History of Violence (2005) at the festival.

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None took home the Palme d’Or – in fact, no Canadian film ever has – but Crash was given a special jury prize for daring and audacity, something only a French film festival could pull off. Cronenberg also won a kind of lifetime achievement prize in 2006.

Cosmopolis did not receive universal acclaim from critics after the screening Friday, although the love-it-or-hate-it reactions actually bode well at a festival which often rewards divisive films. (Last year’s Palme d’Or went to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life.)

At the press conference after the screening, Cronenberg shied away from analyzing the place Cosmopolis has in his oeuvre, which includes such early horrors as The Fly, Scanners and Videodrome, as well as the more recent A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method.

“I don’t think of my other movies when I’m making this movie,” he said. “It’s as though I never made them; they’re completely irrelevant. Of course I can play the role of the analyst and the critic of my own movies … [but] that gives me nothing to work with on the set.”

He was even more determined to “ignore the baggage” brought by star Robert Pattison, whose legions of Twilight fans may give Cosmopolis an unexpected attendance bump when it opens in Canada on June 8.

“We just didn’t deal with it,” Cronenberg said. “It’s very easy to say that this character … is a vampire or a werewolf of Wall Street, but really that’s fairly superficial. This is a real person with a history and a past, and the history and the past is not Twilight, it is Cosmopolis.”

Pattison plays Eric Parker, a Manhattan billionaire who decides to take a trip across town to get a haircut. Along the way he meets several colleagues (the film features Samantha Morton, Mathieu Almaric, Juliette Binoche and others) and runs into his wife (Toronto actress Sarah Gadon) several times before a kind of final showdown with a disgruntled former employee played by Paul Giamatti.

Cronenberg wrote the script for Cosmopolis in just six days, adapted from Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel of the same name. Much of the dialogue comes directly from the book, and the director was adamant that his actors deliver the words to the letter.

“It’s like you’re doing a version of a Bob Dylan song,” he explained. “You’re not going to change the words, but it still gives you a lot of creative scope with the rhythm, with the orchestration, with the vocalization, what register you’re playing in, and that’s the way I was approaching Don’s dialogue. It was like Shakespeare or maybe Harold Pinter. I didn’t want anybody to mess with that.”

DeLillo, who is in Cannes to help promote the movie, deferred to the director. “I had absolutely nothing to do with the script, and that’s why it turned out so well,” he said.

He too resisted the lure of over-analyzing the work, especially the notion (espoused by the trailer) that this is “the first film about our new millennium.” “People who write novels don’t think in those terms,” he said.

Rather, what drove him to write Cosmopolis was the realization more than 10 years ago that there were more and more stretch limos in New York. “Manhattan is the last place on Earth where such automobiles would move comfortably,” he said. “I decided to place a character in such a car and simply go from there. There was no thought in my mind of millennia or apocalypse; just one man in one car. And that’s how I began the novel.”

Regardless of whether or not Cronenberg finally wins a Palme d’Or, this will have been a banner year for Canadians on the Croisette. Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, presented his first film, Antiviral, out of competition, alongside Laurence Anyways, the latest from Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan. Fellow Quebecer Chloe Robichaud has a film, Le chef de meute (Herd Leader) in the short-film competition, the jury for which includes Arsinée Khanjian. And Canadian writer Craig Davidson’s short-story collection was adapted into Jacques Audiard’s Palme-nominated Rust and Bone.

Cannes • “Human nature is not of itself vicious,” Thomas Paine maintained, but most films at Cannes this year appear to think otherwise, none more so than Thomas Vinterberg’s massive hit in the competition, The Hunt, and Michel Franco’s deeply distressing second feature, After Lucia, in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.

The films pair up as studies of the basest human behaviour, of a sadistic group (an entire community in one, a group of school friends in the other) victimizing a lone innocent. Their narrative approaches could not be more different, the first overly explicit to the point of tendentiousness, the other oblique and withholding, but both concur on one crucial point: the natural inclination of humans to act in packs, to assert power over the vulnerable individual, and to never regret (or even recognize) their communal barbarism.

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Danish director Vinterberg made his international reputation at Cannes in 1998 with Festen, and The Hunt returns to some of that film’s darkest themes. Mads Mikkelsen plays a recently divorced 40-year-old kindergarten teacher falsely accused of sexually abusing one of his young charges. The lie spreads quickly, poisoning his relationships with his best friend (whose daughter is the supposed victim), his already alienated wife, his new girlfriend and all the parents and townspeople who once admired him as a fine teacher and community member.

Vinterberg based the film on case studies of modern-day witch hunts ensuing from children’s fantasies interpreted (and abetted) by over-eager authorities as verifiable but “repressed memories” of actual events. The film would have profited from a greater degree of ambiguity about the teacher’s innocence, and from a subtler portrait of the group dynamics that brand him a pervert and subsequently ostracize and brutalize him, even when he is pronounced guiltless by the courts. (A sequence in which a supermarket’s staff beat him bloody, pelting him with cans of food, is particularly egregious.) Although handsomely shot and well acted, The Hunt rarely rises above film-of-the-week obviousness. When the teacher’s son casually remarks that their dog has not returned, one knows to fear for the poor animal’s fate.

Vinterberg offers a perhaps inadvertent critique of his country’s social do-gooderism in his sharp-eyed portrait of the kindergarten’s matronly overseer, who can’t stop warning the world about the depraved one in their midst. (She throws up at the very mention of semen.)

A world away, in the violent world of Mexico, a different kind of group persecution is to be expected, but there are several similarities in the oppression of a school student in After Lucia to that of the teacher in The Hunt. Young director Michel Franco has studied the art film tropes of contemporary cinema, and the elliptical, quietly modulated first half of his film reveals a mastery of suggestive storytelling. A chef and his teenaged daughter move from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City after their wife/mother is killed in a car accident. These facts emerge slowly, with great indirection, so stating them this bluntly seems like a misrepresentation of the film’s initial moderation.

The widower has slipped into depression, weeping by himself, sleeping too much, unable to maintain the patience and concentration to run a new restaurant. His daughter’s popularity at school quickly turns into its opposite when a cellphone video turns viral, and she is labelled a whore. Intent on protecting her father in his grief, she reports nothing of the campaign of degradation — bullying is too mild a term for it — directed against her.

Some will argue that Franco’s description of the girl’s humiliation goes too far, so extreme are the acts of physical and psychological mortification visited upon the innocent. (Her hair shorn by her tormentors, her body subject to all manner of indignity, the increasingly abject and isolated girl at times recalls the passive, maltreated Joan of Arc of Carl-Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film about the saint.) But Franco’s narrative and visual control renders the facts of brutality as indisputable, though his restraint unfortunately falters in the final half hour, when the film becomes a revenge drama, betraying its previous abstention.

James Quandt is senior programmer for Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque.

CANNES • Critical reaction to The Paperboy, a new film from Precious director Lee Daniels, was muted when it had its screening for the press at Cannes on Thursday morning. There were some cheers, some jeers, and a stampede for the exit — though whether that was to get away from the movie or get to the press conference wasn’t clear.

There’s no doubt, however, that the film marks some of the best work from stars Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron and John Cusack in some time. And the actors seemed to realize it.

“I was thrilled,” said Cusack, on being cast as Hillary Van Wetter, a rough piece of work who’s on death row in Florida for the murder of a local sheriff. “I felt like I’d been let out of some cage. When I met with Lee … he talked to me about a film I’d made with Stephen Frears a long time ago called The Grifters. He was looking into me saying, ‘I know you’ve got more to give than you’ve been giving lately.’ And that’s music to an actor’s ears.”

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The Paperboy is based on a 1995 novel by Pete Dexter, who worked on the adaptation with Daniels after Pedro Almodóvar abandoned an earlier script. Set in rural Florida in the summer of 1969, it features McConaughey and David Oyelowo as journalists trying to prove Van Wetter’s innocence. Efron plays McConaughey’s younger brother, while Kidman is Charlotte Bless, a southern sexpot who’s fallen in love with Cusack’s jailed character.

“I had to step into a place to play the character where I didn’t step out of it too much,” Kidman said. “It’s my job to give over to something, not to censor it. I’m there to portray a truth.”

In an early conversation with Daniels, he kidded that she was going to have to do her own hair and makeup. In response, she did herself up with a fake tan, a platinum wig and other accessories. “I took a photo and I texted it to Lee, kind of all different provocative positions. What he sent back, which I cannot say because it’s so —” She paused. “It was like, ‘thumbs up.’ ”

Efron, who falls hard for Kidman’s character, seems to have carried some of that adulation off the set. “I was ecstatic the day I found out she was playing the part,” the 24-year-old said of his costar, who’s 20 years older. “I’ve been in love with her a long time, since Moulin Rouge!” He added: “I was scared to death of John.”

McConaughey, who called the director “Lee-onardo,” said he enjoyed Daniels’ style. “As soon as you nail it he goes, ‘OK now do something I’ve never seen.’ I saw the film. There’s a whole lot of those takes in it.”

Daniels said that The Paperboy required “stars that sell internationally, but actors who want to jump into another place. That combination … is very rare. They gave me their souls with a ‘yes sir.’ These magnificent actors gave it all to me.”

McConaughey added that the independent nature of the film made for an exciting shoot. “Time is so precious,” he said. “You don’t go back to the trailer and hang out for a couple of hours. You are shooting and breaking a sweat. ‘We got that? OK, again, next.’ ”

Efron seemed surprised. “We didn’t have a trailer!”

“I had a trailer,” McConaughey replied. “I was living in it.”

Many of the stars will have another chance to work with Daniels soon. The director’s next project is Butler, about White House butler Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents and who died in 2010 at the age of 90. Daniels confirmed that McConaughey will play John F. Kennedy; Cusack will portray Richard Nixon. “We’re trying to keep it PG-13,” he said, “which is a very difficult thing for me to do.”

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]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/scene/scandal-sheet-new-breaking-dawn-posters/feed0stdBreaking Dawn, Part 2 posterChris Knight at Cannes: Movie posters you have to see to believehttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-movie-posters-you-have-to-see-to-believe
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CANNES • On the billboards and hotels along the Croisette each May, one finds giant advertisements for the big films that are premiering at Cannes (On the Road), as well as the ones that are opening everywhere (The Amazing Spider-Man, which I’m sad to say has not been translated as l’incroyable homme-araignée).

That’s above ground. Deep in the bowels of the sprawling Palais des Festivals, however, is the film marketplace, where hundreds of booths represent countries or companies that are trying to interest international buyers in their latest productions. Most of these will never appear on a Canadian cinema screen, although a few will sneak onto DVD, VOD and TV.

In the interests of enticing would-be buyers, sellers offer free handouts of their film posters. Here are some of the more unusual offerings this year.

The copycats Can’t afford the likes of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy? Don’t have the effects budget for a giant luck-dragon? Figure that audiences can’t get enough of Snow White? Just borrow an already existing title and make your own movie!

The close-catsHigh Road — not only does this look like The Hangover; it even features Ed Helms and Rob Riggle, who were in The Hangover. Then there’s American Hangover, which features no one from The Hangover. Or how about Saving Private Perez, which presumably does for Steven Speilberg’s Saving Private Ryan what Cast Me If You Can does for Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can. But why is Photoshop Girl punching her co-star in the jaw?

The simple You can hear the pitch meetings for these: “They’re ninjas, see, but they’re zombies!” “They’re brothers, but they’re pirates!” “They’re also brothers, but they’re in space!” “It’s Snow Falling on Cedars meets Cat on a Hot Tin Roof!” We’re creative types, but we have no original ideas!

The title says it all Look out, it’s some guy who kills people! I’d rather hang out with that cheesophile.

The title says very littleSilent Venom? Isn’t all venom pretty much silent? And Fidgety Bram is going to have me itching to walk out. As for Fred in his first movie, I’d like to apologize to Freds Savage, Astaire, MacMurray, etc. Finally, for fans of the periodic table, we have the eagerly awaited sequel to The Hydrogen Supremacy and The Helium Ultimatum. Next up, The Beryllium Legacy.

-Good on The Big Bang Theory‘s Jim Parsons, who quietly came out of the closet in a New York Times profile, which briefly mentions that he’s gay and in a 10-year relationship.

–Kristen Davis must like walk-and-talks. The Sex and the City star is reportedly dating Aaron Sorkin.

–Robert Pattinson attended Kristen Stewart‘s On the Road Cannes premiere, but the couple selflessly prevented Twihard brains from exploding en masse by abstaining from posing together on the red carpet.

-Speaking of KStew, I think she’s killing it at Cannes. I’m loving all the Balenciaga.

–Snooki is having a boy. Does that mean it’s less likely she’ll dress him in leopard print? Hey, I can dream!

-I’ve been listening to this Father John Misty track on repeat for a week, thinking that there was no way I could love it more. And then I looked up the video and discovered that it stars Audrey Plaza. Well played, sir.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OULhlaX6JY4&w=640&h=390]
]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/scene/jim-parsons-comes-out/feed0stdJim ParsonsChris Knight at Cannes: On the Road was a long ridehttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-on-the-road-was-a-long-ride
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CANNES • It was a suitably long and winding road that led to Walter Salles’ adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s famed 1950s novel On the Road. Producer Francis Ford Coppola bought the film rights back in 1979 but it wasn’t until Salles’ involvement that the project began to gather steam. The results were unveiled Wednesday at the Cannes film festival, where On the Road is in the official slate of competition films.

Salles seems to have road movies in his blood. The Motorcycle Diaries, a critical hit that debuted at Cannes in 2004 and won the Ecumenical Jury Prize, is his story of a young, pre-revolutionary Che Guevara (Gael García Bernal) taking a motorcycle journey through South America with a friend.

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The director saw clear similarities between the films. At the press conference for On the Road, he said both embodied “the very beginning of a social and political awakening, as two young men discover a physical and human geography that was foreign to them. It’s about the loss of innocence. It’s about the search for that last frontier that they would never find.”

On the Road stars Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty, Kerouac’s fictional version of his friend and fellow traveller Neal Cassady. A charismatic womanizer, he married one woman (played by Kristen Stewart), then left her for another (Kirsten Dunst), with whom he would have three children. Sam Riley also stars as Sal Paradise, the character Kerouac wrote as a stand-in for himself.

The film also features Tom Sturridge as a young Allen Ginsberg and Danny Morgan as fellow Beat poet Al Hinkle. Viggo Mortensen, who plays Old Bull Lee (a.k.a. William S. Burroughs), arrived at the press conference toting a Montreal Canadiens flag. (The Habs are Mortensen’s favourite team and much of the film was shot in Montreal.)

Calling it his 100,000-kilometre movie, Salles said he spent years travelling and researching the Beat poets, a group he said “completely altered the face not only of North American culture but of culture in general.”

Before filming began, he put his actors through a kind of boot camp (or Beat camp), where they studied filmmakers who had been influenced by the movement, watched documentaries on such jazz figures as Charles Mingus, and even met with surviving Beats or their widows and children. “We saw so many things, and then we tried to forget them all and create our own story,” Salles said.

The film marks a departure for Stewart, still best known for her role in the Twilight movies, the last of which opens in November. In addition to On the Road being a much more serious film, the 22-year-old actress appears nude in a number of scenes.

“Obviously everyone who does scenes like that, the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, I felt so safe, Walter put me in an environment that was very informed by the natural …’ But I love pushing. I love scaring myself. And to watch genuine experience on screen is just so much more interesting.

“I wanted to do it. I always want to get as close to the experience as I possibly can. As long as you’re always being really honest there’s nothing ever to be ashamed of.”

Stewart, who has been acting since she was nine, was just 17 when Salles first approached her; this was before her Twilight years. “I’m very happy that I was able to age a couple of years before we shot the film,” she said.

Mortensen, who famously over-prepares for every role, arrived on the set of On the Road with costumes, guns (Burroughs liked to shoot, and killed his wife while trying to shoot an apple off her head), a typewriter and other period props.

“You didn’t bring the flag,” Salles said, but praised him for his attention to detail, and said that any differences between the novel and the film are in the spirit of the Beat generation. “More than anything, Kerouac was looking for the constant improvisation, the cult of spontaneity, and this is what we brought to it.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-on-the-road-was-a-long-ride/feed0stdOn The RoadChris Knight at Cannes: The Angels’ Share is too ribald for its own goodhttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-the-angels-share-is-too-ribald-for-its-own-good
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-the-angels-share-is-too-ribald-for-its-own-good#respondWed, 23 May 2012 12:00:37 +0000http://arts.nationalpost.com/?p=73918

CANNES • Language is a touchy subject at the movies. In the United States, more than one non-sexual use of the f-word will usually result in an R rating. A similar problem cropped up in Ken Loach’s newest film, The Angels’ Share, which premieres in competition at Cannes this week.

The film may not have the right stuff to walk off with the serious Palme d’Or prize, but it’s a rollicking, ribald, crowd-pleasing comedy about a group of unemployed Glaswegian miscreants who hatch a plan to steal a million-pound cask (that’s value, not weight) of the rarest whisky on Earth.

The British Board of Film Classification was not amused, however, and threatened to give the film an “18” rating (adults only) unless the language was toned down.

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Loach and his producing partner Rebecca O’Brien described some of the bureaucratic difficulties they had with the BBFC. For delicacy’s sake I’ll change the contentious expletive to Hunt, in honour of Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, whom The Angels’ Share writer Paul Laverty berated at the press conference for the film.

“We were allowed seven Hunts,” said the 75-year-old director, “but only two of them could be aggressive Hunts.” O’Brien added: “We were allowed to keep all the non-aggressive Hunts, and I think we just covered up the other Hunts.”

“You get into the realm of surrealism here in terms of language,” Loach observed. “The British middle class is obsessed by what they call bad language. The odd oath, like a word that goes back to Chaucer’s time, they will ask you to cut, but the manipulative and deceitful language of politics they use themselves.

“So I think they should re-examine what is bad language, and have respect for our ancient oaths and swear words, which we all enjoy.”

The Angels’ Share takes its name from a term used in the whisky business to describe the annual minuscule evaporation of the product. The film also made use of Scottish whisky expert Charles MacLean, who came to Cannes to help promote it.

“They always say when it’s raining that it’s good weather for making whisky, and it’s also good weather for drinking whisky,” he said in reference to Cannes’ unseasonably wet, cool weather. “So I feel very much at home.”

MacLean said that in a pivotal scene, the liquid he imbibed in the film was the real thing. “I felt very sorry for the extras at the tasting scene because I was the only one who had the whisky and the scene took quite a long time to shoot.” He seemed shocked when asked what it was like. “It was first-rate whisky. I wouldn’t drink anything else.”

Loach is not known for his comic sensibilities. What humour his film contains is generally grim, and his recent films have focused on the Iraq War (Route Irish), immigration and unemployment (It’s a Free World) and the Irish War of Independence (The Wind That Shakes the Barley).

Even The Angels’ Share contains a tragic underpinning, touching on youth unemployment and violence. “We wanted to take a tragic situation but present it in a way that would make people smile, but not ignore the reality underneath,” Loach said.

“I think our attitude was that you don’t direct it as a comedy. You just try to tell the truth about the characters … and then funny things happen and they should make you smile as in life,” he continued. “You could take the same characters and tell a tragic story. Just tell the story of this moment and the criterion is not will we get a laugh or will we shed a tear. The criterion is, is it true?”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/chris-knight-at-cannes-the-angels-share-is-too-ribald-for-its-own-good/feed0stdKen-LoachPablo Larraín’s No means more than nohttp://news.nationalpost.com/arts/pablo-larrains-no-means-more-than-no
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With one of the first critical and popular hits of the Cannes festival, Chilean director Pablo Larraín returned to the Directors’ Fortnight with No, the film that completes his important trilogy about the reign of Augusto Pinochet. Acquired Tuesday by Sony Pictures Classics for U.S. and Canadian distribution, No differs greatly from the first two films in the trilogy, Tony Manero and Post Mortem, blistering black satires that feature the Nosferatu-looking actor Alfredo Castro.

Both disco and Dantean inferno, Tony Manero portrays a dead-eyed survivor who is “stayin’ alive” during Pinochet’s repressive regime. Set in Santiago in 1978, the year Saturday Night Fever was released in Chile and half a decade after Pinochet seized power, Manero turns one man’s obsession with popular culture into a scary, airless study in the psychosis of fascism, the violence of the impassive and disappointed, the horrors of history played out as performance.

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Director Larraín, who hails from a right-wing family of wealth and political power, often employs overbearing metaphor to make his points. In Post Mortem, relentless sunlight turns Chile into a nation of wraiths. “Nothing can escape the wheel of history,” someone proclaims early on, but the film’s two self-absorbed protagonists do their best to ignore the imminence of history. A sallow, lank-haired morgue assistant (creepy Castro again) takes up with the anorexic cabaret dancer from across the street, their apolitical indifference protecting them for a short while, until the chaos of Pinochet’ putsch engulfs their cadaverous romance.

No completes the Pinochet trilogy even as it departs markedly from the tone, theme, and visual style of its predecessors. Working for the first time with a major bankable star, Gael García Bernal, Larraín delegates the ever pallid Alfredo Castro to second billing as Bernal’s boss and political nemesis. More nuanced and talkative, and depending less on metaphor and atmosphere, No replaces Tony Manero’s frantic compositions and the implacably controlled widescreen images of Post Mortem with an approach that risks aesthetic affront.

Chronicling the national referendum that brought the downfall of Pinochet in 1988, the film is shot in the lowest of lo-tech video, as if made with U-matic equipment of that period. The overlit images, presented in square television format, have a washed-out, swimmy quality that dissolves outlines and distorts color. Once again experimenting with outdated technology — Post Mortem used antique Russian camera lens to achieve its pale lighting — Larraín employs his grubby look not just for documentary “authenticity” and period ambience, but to suggest that harsh truth requires harsh methods.

No centres on a young, upcoming advertising producer (Bernal) who takes on the television campaign to depose Pinochet. At once a brilliant character and social portrait, the film limns the “pragmatic” character of the adman who believes that the same methods used to sell a soft drink called Free (pop music, happy faces, mimes) can be used to spur Chileans to vote No against Pinochet. Arguing for jingles instead of anthems, humour and uplift instead of dire facts about disappearances, torture, and murder, the clever exec subdues the old-liners who find his tactics distasteful, amounting to a Pinochet-like repression of history. His former wife, a political activist, argues that he is abetting the regime by participating in a masquerade.

Larraín maintains a studiously ambiguous attitude toward the No campaign, celebrating its success in winning the referendum — though the outcome is known from history, the film still manages to be tense, suspenseful — while asking what was sacrificed in that victory. Politics become product, the suppression of facts in favor of anodyne, idealized images, ideas replaced by slogans, history rendered silent: the director seems to situate the debased state of contemporary politics in this transformation. The No of his title takes on ominous new meaning in that light.

It’s usual to see egos on display at the Cannes film festival, but seldom does the show get more Freudian than at the press conference for Brad Pitt’s latest film, Killing Them Softly.

Director Andrew Dominik, who last worked with Pitt on 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James, divided the film’s character into Freudian triumvirates. Scoot McNairy, playing a small-time criminal, is partnered with a fellow felon (Ben Mendelsohn) as “the pleasure-seeking id,” and Vincent Curatola as the authoritarian superego who gets them to knock over an illegal casino run by Ray Liotta.

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Pitt plays organized crime hitman Jackie Cogan; the film is a adaptation of George V. Higgins’ 1974 novel Cogan’s Trade, though set in 2008 on the cusp of Barack Obama’s presidential election. Cogan’s id is James Gandolfini as a hard-drinking, hard-living reprobate. Richard Jenkins, the mob go-between who hires Cogan to sort out the aftermath of the robbery, is the superego.

“Scoot is basically trying to get his id and his superego to agree with each other, and he ends up dead,” Dominick said. “And Brad, when his id gets in problems, he puts it in jail.

“The movie is basically telling people to have good mental health,” he concluded. “Not to blindly seek pleasure, and not to indulge in too much self-punishment. And if you do that in a cutthroat, capitalist, Darwinist environment, then you’ll do fine.”

Killing Them Softly is one of the more middling contributions to what has been a strong lineup up at Cannes this year. Its setting, during the 2008 financial crisis, is telescoped rather heavy-handedly, through repeated images of Obama’s campaign speeches and the use of Depression-era music in the soundtrack.

It’s heavy on dialogue, but the words seldom crackle, although Pitt’s final line in the film — “America isn’t a country; it’s a business,” followed by a directive to pay up — echoed in many a critic’s mind after the screening.

The film also features moments of intense violence. (It takes its title from Pitt’s character’s desire to kill his victims “softly,” with a minimum of crying, begging for life or other embarrassments.) Both its director and its star defended the use of violence in the film.

“I like violence in movies,” Dominik said. “Movies are drama, and the most dramatic expression of drama is violence.”

“We live in such a violent world,” Pitt added. “I grew up hunting, which is a very violent act. Have you ever had a hamburger? If you’ve seen how they butcher a cow, it’s barbaric. This is the world we live in. So I see it as absolutely important to the film.”

Pitt said that even being a father doesn’t make him think twice about taking on the role of a killer. “Violence is an accepted part of the gangster world,” he said. “Murder is an accepted possibility when you’re dealing with crime. I would have a much harder time playing something like a racist. It would be much more upsetting for me than a guy who shoots another guy in the face.”

Liotta wasn’t interested in delving into questions of violence or psychology, however. “I just want to play pretend,” he said. “I’m just here to service the story. Sounds like a lot of work to go the other way.”

CANNES • It’s a historic year for the Cannes film festival – never before have a father and son both had films screened in the official lineup. That’s changing, with this past weekend’s debut of 32-year-old Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral in the Un Certain Regard section, followed by Friday’s anticipated premiere of Cosmopolis by his father, David Cronenberg.

Father and son — let’s drop formalities and call them David and Brandon — sat down with the press on Monday to talk about their two films and the similarities in their styles. Despite prodding from moderator (and Toronto Film Festival artistic director) Cameron Bailey, David said he never tried to shape his son’s interests, let alone his career.

“I have no dynastic ambitions,” he said, defining his style of parenting as “lazy.” Although it was impossible not to remark upon certain things about Brandon’s appreciation of movies as a child. “I noticed he was incredibly sensitive to the music of film. He knew what scary music was … he’d run away.”

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For his part, Brandon said he resisted the lure of the director’s chair for some time. “The assumption that I was going to get into film, by people I didn’t know, kind of put me off,” he said. “When I was 24 I decided that was maybe not a good reason to avoid doing something that was interesting to me. So I enrolled in film school at Ryerson.”

He had previously wanted to be a novelist — something his father said had also intrigued him in his early days — and had dabbled in visual art and music. “Film seems like a good way to collect those creative interests into one art form.” His mentor while making Antiviral was not his father but Canadian producer Niv Fichman.

David’s new film has yet to be seen in Cannes, but Brandon’s handily fits the adjective “Cronenbergian,” created to encompass the kind of body horror that marked such early works of his father as Scanners, Videodrome and The Fly. Antiviral takes place in an alternate present in which fans of celebrities pay to be infected with the same diseases suffered by the objects of their obsession.

David, whose avuncular manner belies his gruesome creations, and who is at pains to insist, “I have no demons,” explained that some of his themes derive from playing in and exploring Toronto’s ravines when he was growing up there.

“I was always a nature boy, I loved nature and animals and insects,” he said. “And Bran proved to have that same kind of sensibility … which undoubtedly has something to do with the kind of movies I’ve made and that he seems to be making as well.

“It comes from a real affection for the strangeness of animal life on Earth. It’s very pure and very direct.”

Brandon, understandably nervous in the glare of the lights, often deferred to the 69-year-old David. “I’m literally a clone of my father, so I live in an identical interior space as well,” he said at one point.

Brandon worked on the script for Antiviral over eight years and 32 drafts, and was also influenced by the modern cult of celebrity. “A celebrity is a cultural construct that’s … unrelated to the human being,” he said, “and that continues to exist independent of the life and death of the human being.”

For an example of this, one need only look at the poster for this year’s Cannes film festival, which feature an image of Marilyn Monroe, who died 50 years ago this summer, blowing out a candle to wish Cannes a happy 65th birthday. “It’s kind of ironic but at the same time what better place to have a discussion about celebrity?”

Cannes and filmmaking have both changed in the years since David, then 28, arrived for the first time in 1971. He had since won several Cannes prizes and in 1999 headed the festival jury. “It was a real education,” he said of that first trip. “Telefilm Canada was then the Canadian Film Development Corporation and they had offices in the Carlton and they let me sleep there at night. I had a suite at the Carlton!”

Cosmopolis and Antiviral were shot with the same type of digital camera, and it marked the first time David had used the technology. “I have no particular affection for film,” he said, pointing out that even in Toronto there are no longer labs to process film stock. “It’s about time film died its natural death. However, the filmmaking process is exactly the same. Why would you ever want to shoot film? Well, I don’t.”